Northwestern University Athletics
Olympic Sport Feature: Women's Soccer's Leigh Jakes
10/16/2008 12:00:00 AM | Football
Oct. 16, 2008
Leigh Jakes closed her freshman campaign on Nov. 2, 2006. She did not appear in another game until Aug. 13, 2008--more than 21 months off the soccer field for the 2006 Big Ten All-Freshman selection.
A native of Georgia, Leigh Jakes arrived on Northwestern's campus in August of 2006 with a once-injured right quadriceps muscle, but a completely clean MRI and bill-of-health entering her freshman season. The defender re-injured the muscle on the third day of preseason training and did not see the game field until Big Ten play--eight games into the season.
Her performance in 10 Big Ten games was enough to garner Big Ten All-Freshman honors from the conference's coaches.
"She was an outside back that year and was unstoppable getting forward," head coach Stephanie Erickson said. "Her pace and her athleticism made it so no one could deal with her in the attack. On defense, she's hard to beat. Big Ten coaches were amazed by her ability and willingness to get forward and how hard she was to stop."
After the season, Jakes was shut down with a diagnosed quad strain. However, what multiple athletic trainers and doctors thought was a simple strain was not getting better. After several unsuccessful comeback attempts through the winter and spring, Jakes was held out of the 2007 season.
"Between January and November of 2007, we played with her rehab," athletic trainer Danielle Colegrove, now in her ninth season with the women's soccer program, said. "Structurally, the muscle was fine. Everything we asked her to do whether it was high knees or kicking, shooting passing or sprinting, she could do, just not for very long and she wouldn't recover fast enough. Leigh couldn't play for more than 45 minutes, so we just kept her out for the entire season."
Although she couldn't be with her teammates on the field, Jakes did everything she could off it to help and be supportive of her fellow Wildcats. A task that is hard for players forced onto the sidelines.
"The biggest thing for me was to be ready to step in as soon as I got healthy," Jakes said. "I was focused on doing the rehab, but there was only so much in my control as far as that goes. I decided to focus on what I could control by helping others in my position or motivating my teammates, learning everything I could, standing by the coaches and feeding off of them so I could bring it to the field when I got back."
Her head coach admired Jakes' outlook during her tough battle.
"She had a great attitude," Erickson said. "For anyone to be out as long as she was, you can easily get bored, lose focus or separate yourself because your role tends to diminish. Leigh carved out a role for herself that was similar to coaching. She sat by us on the bench, engaged herself in practice with the defenders and I think she learned a lot that year by having what turned out to be a luxury of watching the game and absorbing things over an entire season."
Assistant coach Danielle Slaton, a three-time All-American defender and former U.S. National Team member, also praised Jakes for how she handled the difficult situation.
"I really can't imagine anyone handling it better," Slaton said. "I really thought of her as an assistant coach last year. She was listening to what I had to say and listening to what our defenders had to learn. Not only that, she was giving feedback to them when she couldn't be on the field but could maybe see something the players on the field couldn't see. She was as `into the game' as she could be without actually being in the game."
At the end of the 2007 season, exhausted of ideas and options, Northwestern's athletic raining staff reached out for second opinions--including several ideas from Chicago Bears' physicians.
"We bring up new injuries in our staff meetings and we talked about this for over a year," Colegrove said. "We bounced ideas around 14 staff members and she still wasn't getting better."
After one of the Bears' orthopedists suggested Jakes might not have a strain, but actually a hernia in the muscle, it led NU's staff to the idea that it might be scar tissue from her previous injury causing all of her pain and slow recovery.
In April of 2008, after trying anything and everything to get better, Jakes decided to have surgery to remove an egg-sized piece of scar tissue from her right quadriceps muscle. After that, it was a smooth path back to the soccer pitch.
"She did phenomenal," Colegrove said. "The quad responded and recovered well with everything we asked it to do. She started the summer strength and conditioning packet two weeks later than the rest of the team, but she came back as strong as everyone else. If we hadn't removed the scar tissue, she still wouldn't be playing."
The staff held her out of one of the three fitness tests as a precaution, but she proved her health by blowing away the two she did run in by two to three seconds.
Jakes made her return to the game field in NU's exhibition against Louisville at Lakeside Field on August 13 and has started every game since.
"It was nerve-wracking," Jakes said. "There is always that small doubt if you are really ready or not. I had been out so long that there was no reason not to test it. I think the biggest thing was being really excited to be back, but to be smart about it and not to try to do too much too fast. I don't even think about that injury. It's great to play and not have to worry about it."
Erickson and Slaton admit that Jakes is at a disadvantage this season compared to her Division I peers, but are confident that because of her attitude during her recovery and willingness to learn, the more time Jakes spends on the field getting comfortable playing soccer again, the closer she will get to the form that struck fear in opposing coaches and forwards.
"If anyone can handle it, Leigh can," Slaton said. "She is so smart and invested, and can learn without actually have to `do'. Now that she's back on the field and can perform, it's taking her a while to get the hang of it, but she knows what to do."
